VISA Announces Pilot API For its Banking Partners to Allow Customers Direct Bitcoin Purchase

VISA, the world’s leading payment processing giant has announced a new Pilot API program for its banking partners that would allow customers to purchase bitcoin and other crypto-assets seamlessly. VISA has joined hands with Anchorage as the technology partner for the pilot program.

First Boulevard, a Kansas-based, Black-focused digital bank, will pilot the APIs, designed to help Visa clients integrate bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

VISA in its official statement said the new Crypto APIs pilot program will help its banking clients to easily access the new facility. The official statement read,

The new API ‘easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences,”

VISA Goes All-In Crypto

The rise of bitcoin as the choice of inflation hedge this bull season has made many mainstream institutions make note of it as more than 10 publically traded companies added Bitcoin to their portfolio. Visa being the payment processing giant is not new to bitcoin or crypto as the firm has partnered with numerous crypto companies to offer crypto service using their network. However, the recent launch of its new banking API for Bitcoin and crypto purchase only highlights the growing influence of cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin.

said Jack Forestell, chief product officer, Visa said that the company aims to become the bridge between the emerging digital asset market and its established remittance empire with nearly 70 million users across the world.

“We set out to make Visa the bridge between digital currencies and our global network of 70 million merchants and today we are the leading network for crypto wallets with 35 crypto platforms choosing to issue with Visa. With this pilot program, we want to extend the value of Visa to our neobank and financial institution clients by providing an easy bridge to crypto assets and blockchain networks.”

The tone of the official press release suggests that the API pilot is going to be the first among many programs by the firm to tap into the 1 trillion dollar industry.